Tower sections for state of the art wind turbines may have cylindrical or slightly conical end faces with a flange having a plurality of holes for fastening sections together on the site of application. The tower sections typically have an outer diameter in the order of about 2 to 5 meters, a weight of about 10 to 80 tonnes and a length of 10 to 50 meters, even though in some cases values higher that these may be utilised. Fixation and handling during transportation is hence far from trivial. In most cases, several types of transportation are required since manufacturing of tower sections takes place in centralised facilities. Therefore, the transportation will typically involve two or more types of transportation by sea, rail and road and hence reloading of the tower sections, which is far from trivial due to the size and weight of the sections.
EP 1303447 discloses a device for handling wind turbine tower sections. Four gripping appliances are connected to the flange of the tower section and the gripping appliances are thereafter connected to either an adapter with four container corners or to a further gripping appliance and tower section. The gripping appliances are dedicated to one single tower diameter and one single separation between holes in the flange of the tower.
Other appliances using gripping appliances which are dedicated to one single arrangement of holes in a flange of a tower section or a wind turbine root are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,983,844 and WO 2004/041589.